July 16, 2008 -- CIA "blowback" haunts Bush 41

Former President George H. W. Bush had a very good reason to lash out at "conspiracy theorists" in support of the Warren Commission Report at President Gerald Ford's funeral in January 2007. Bush, who oddly used a eulogy for Ford to bring up the assassination of President John F. Kennedy said, "the conspiracy theorists can say what they will , but the Warren Commission report will always have the final definitive say on this tragic matter. Why? Because Jerry Ford put his name on it and Jerry Ford's word was always good."

Bush had good reason to praise Ford. WMR has learned from ex-CIA sources familiar with the November 22, 1963 assassination operation against Kennedy directed by the CIA, elements of the U.S. military, and Mafia mobsters with whom the CIA had a long-standing connection, that George H. W. Bush was present at the Texas School Book Depository at the time multiple sniper teams shot President Kennedy to death.

The above photo was taken at the time of Kennedy's shooting. Bush, at the time, was President of Zapata Off-shore Drilling Company in Houston, Texas. WMR's intelligence sources have confirmed that the above photo is that of then-CIA operative George H. W. Bush. Zapata was used as a CIA front for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. Individuals standing in the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) have always been a subject for controversy in the Kennedy assassination. A man who was alleged to have been accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and who was spotted in the TSBD moments after Kennedy's assassination was actually Billy Nolan Lovelady. A photograph taken by Associated Press photographer James Altgens shows Lovelady wearing a plaid shirt, not the solid shirt worn by Oswald.

Billy Lovelady (left) was mis-identified as Oswald. Lovelady died during the House Select Committee on Assassinations hearings.

In 2004, this editor wrote the following:

The name "George Bush" appears much too frequently in documents, some newly released, relating to the assassination of President Kennedy. Since there is no statute of limitations on murder or accessory to murder, I can understand why Bush pere and fils may want to erase November 22, 1963 from the history books.

The document trail linking George H. W. Bush to those involved in the assassination of President Kennedy is nothing less than chilling. First is a memo dated November 22, 1963, from FBI Special Agent Graham Kitchel to the FBI Special Agent in Charge in Houston. The subject is "Unknown Subject; Assassination of President John F. Kennedy." The memo states: At 1:45 p.m. Mr. George H. W. Bush, President of the Zapata Off-shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.

BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES PARROTT has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.

BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in the area. He stated that he felt Mrs. FAWLEY, telephone number SU 2-5239, or ARLENE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of PARROTT.

BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone number is CA 2-0395.

So we have George H. W. Bush telling the FBI that he did not know the source of the information but knew that a John Bircher named James Parrott, who was the same age as Lee Harvey Oswald (24), wanted to kill President Kennedy in Houston. Bush did not know much about Parrott but gave the name of two Republican Party officials in Houston. Of course, Bush's Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company had been a CIA front since 1960 and had supplied the Bay of Pigs invasion (code named "Zapata") force with two of his company's ex-U.S. Navy landing craft, renamed the "Barbara J" and the "Houston." In any case, Bush's phone call to the FBI was a false lead, and Parrott was cleared. However, Bush's phone call creates more questions about him than about Parrott. First of all, there is no evidence that Bush was in Tyler when Kennedy was shot. There was no Caller ID in those days that would have allowed Special Agent Kitchel to know, for a fact, that Bush was calling from Tyler. Bush's wife, Barbara, claimed he was in Tyler but Bush once said he may have been in Port-au-Prince, Haiti that day. But Bush himself admits to the FBI that he was booked into the Sheraton Hotel in Dallas on November 22.

Bush always had a keen interest in what files the government had on Kennedy's assassination. When he was CIA Director in 1976, Bush wanted to see all the agency's files on the Kennedy assassination. His memos specifically requested information on Oswald, Jack Ruby, and others linked to the assassination. In her book The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, author Kitty Kelley writes that "Years later, when [Bush] became president of the United States, he would deny making any attempt to review the agency files on the JFK assassination… when he made this claim, he did not realize that the agency would release 18 documents [under the Freedom of Information Act] that showed he had indeed, as CIA director, requested information-not once, but several times-on a wide range of questions surrounding the Kennedy assassination."

Then there is the business of the November 29, 1963 memo from the Director of the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research to J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI Director. The subject is "Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963." The memo states:

Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U.S. but to all of Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.

An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to us, George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963 by Mr. W.T. Forsyth of this Bureau.

A copy of the above memo was furnished to the Director of Naval Intelligence. That is important for reasons that will be explained in the following paragraph.

Not only was George H. W. Bush, a known CIA operative, in Dallas on November 22 but he was also keeping track of the stance of pro-Castroites in Miami. That would have been important because Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's accused assassin was supposed to be a pro-Communist member of the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee." But he was also associated with the "Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean" and "Friends of Democratic Cuba." And his apparent control officer was FBI agent Guy Bannister, formerly of the Chicago FBI office and a former Naval Intelligence officer, whose office "Guy Bannister Associates, Inc." a CIA cut-out for training anti-Castro Cubans, was located at 544 Camp Street in New Orleans. 544 Camp was also the address used by Oswald's "pro-Communist" "Fair Play for Cuba Committee." The local Office of Naval Intelligence was across the street from 544 Camp.

The Director of Naval Intelligence is made privy, as an "info addee," to the aforementioned State Department memo on the reaction of pro- and anti-Castro Cubans in Miami to Kennedy's death.

Oswald, while stationed at a classified U-2 base in Japan as a U.S. Marine, would have had his security clearance adjudicated by the Office of Naval Intelligence.

Bush's role as a CIA operative in the Bay of Pigs invasion, a military action in which the Office of Naval Intelligence was closely involved, suggests that the other links between Bush, ONI, and the anti-Castro Cuban exiles are not benign.

George H. W. Bush has still other, more oblique links to Kennedy assassin. The Houston-based conspirator James Parrott, like Guy Bannister, was a fervent John Bircher. Bannister was not only associated with Oswald but also David Ferrie, the commander of a Louisiana Civil Air Patrol unit whose members included not only Oswald but also James Reynolds Bath, the future buddy and Texas Air National Guard pal of George W. Bush. According to one of Bath's former Houston business associates, Bath became a pilot through the cadet program of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol, a known recruiting ground for future CIA agents. Six days before Pearl Harbor, the Civil Air Patrol was founded by Dallas oilman David Harold Byrd who also owned the Texas School Book Depository from the 1930s to 1972. Another supporter of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol was Claire Chennault, the founder of China's "Flying Tigers" and the notorious "Civil Air Transport" of China that later became Air America. Chennault died in New Orleans' murky intelligence-connected Ochsner Foundation Hospital in 1958. In 1964, Byrd apparently removed the "Oswald" window pane from the fifth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and made it a souvenir fixture in his home. [Since this report, WMR has discovered that the late Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informant and CIA pilot Barry Seal, gunned down on February 19, 1986, gangland-style in Baton Rouge, was also a member of the New Orleans-based Louisiana Civil Air Patrol, along with Bath, Ferrie, and Oswald. Seal was due to testify in a major drug smuggling case that was thought to implicate then-Vice President Bush and Iran-contra felon Oliver North in the smuggling of cocaine from Colombia.] Another connection between Bush and the assassination is George DeMohrenshildt, an anti-Communist White Russian-émigré who befriended fellow White Russian Marina Oswald and her husband Lee upon their emigration from the Soviet Union to Texas, where DeMohrenshildt was involved in the oil business. DeMohrenshildt's son-in-law told the Warren Commission that is was likely that his father-in-law was involved with the Kennedy assassination. DeMohrenshildt had an interest in pursuing oil exploration contracts with Haitian President Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier - something that may have involved George H. W. Bush's one-time alibi that he was in Port-au-Prince on November 22, 1963. In March 1977, the House Assassinations Committee was due to interview DeMohrenshildt but just a few hours before his scheduled appearance he was found dead of a "self-inflicted" gun shot wound. When DeMohrenshildt's personal address book was discovered, it was found to contain the following entry:

"Bush, George H.W. (Poppy) 1412 W. Ohio also Zapata Petroleum Midland" Number: "4-6355"

From the directory entry it appeared that DeMohrenshildt, who was rumored to be with the CIA, knew George H. W. (or Poppy as his family calls him) from before 1959, when Bush moved from Midland to Houston. It is also noteworthy that while he was taking care of the Oswalds during 1962, DeMohrenshildt was in close contact with Admiral Henry Bruton, the former Director of Naval Communications, who would have played an important supporting role for Naval Intelligence's activities in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Seal was also believed to have worked for CIA Miami station chief (and Bay of Pigs coordinator) Ted Shackley in Laos in the late 1960s. The above photo was taken at a Miami nightclub on January 22, 1963 and shows a number of CIA individuals involved in "Operation 40" plots against the Castro government in Cuba. On left, foreground, going clockwise, Felix Rodriguez (who later worked for Vice President Bush in illegal Nicaraguan contra support operations), Porter Goss (who would be named CIA director under George W. Bush and became involved in a prostitution/poker ring at the Watergate. Note: E. Warren Goss, a Boulder, Colorado attorney, has been reportedly involved in secret money movements involving George H. W. Bush. E. Warren Goss is, according to CIA sources in Houston, the brother of Porter Goss), and Seal.

WMR has also recently been told by U.S. intelligence sources that, in addition to the 6th Floor sniper's nest from which Oswald allegedly shot Kennedy, there were snipers positioned in the Dal Tex Building on Dealey Plaza and behind the fence on the Grassy Knoll. In addition, the sources said that assassination conspirators had been infiltrated into the President's motorcade. Others were bought off to change their stories. One, a Texas Department of Public Safety Officer, altered his story about what he saw to FBI and other investigators and was rewarded with an appointment as a Texas Ranger. Perhaps owing to the fact that the circumstances of his appointment were made with the blood of the President, the individual was never presented with the honorary Texas Ranger badge upon his retirement.

WMR has also learned from U.S. intelligence sources that the Egyptian Lounge in Dallas was used as a planning venue for the hit on Kennedy. Co-conspirator Jack Ruby (aka, Jacob Rubinstein) met there with CIA intermediaries to plan the details of the assassination.